A 3 Day PCOS Diet Meal Plan

A Low Carb, Low GI PCOS Diet Plan for Weight Loss & Fertility

If you are trying to lose weight, get pregnant, or free yourself from other PCOS related health issues then this blog and accompanying PCOS meal plan can be an important first step toward achieving your goal.

Read this blog post to learn important dietary principles for beating PCOS, as well as several practical tips that make this meal plan easy to implement.

This PCOS diet plan has been developed off the success of my free 30 Day PCOS Diet Challenge where I have seen literally thousands of women achieve life changing results.

I run this live event four times a year to provide group activities, meal plans, and nutritional video lessons to women who understand that eating better is the key to achieving freedom from PCOS for good.

Why This PCOS Diet Plan is Great for Weight Loss as Well as Getting Pregnant

There’s no doubt that this meal plan is great for weight loss, but its use goes well beyond this simple objective.

What I call “unfair weight gain” occurs in women with PCOS because of the hormonal dysregulation and chronic low grade inflammation caused by this disorder. The thing is, these same mechanisms are also responsible for all the other typical symptoms associated with PCOS like ovulation issues, and increased rates of miscarriage.

What this means is that the same PCOS diet that helps you lose weight, is also the best way to improve your fertility regardless of your BMI. This is especially important to be aware of if you have lean type PCOS and are looking for a PCOS diet plan to get pregnant.

Success Stories of People Using This PCOS Meal Plan

While science has clearly shown that the right diet really is the safest and most powerful treatment for PCOS, for me, seeing real life success stories is often the most compelling.

Why This PCOS Diet Plan Is Not About Dieting

Rather than starve yourself thin as most other diets will demand, a PCOS friendly diet requires only that you avoid specific foods that make your PCOS worse while continuing to enjoy as much “good” food as you need to feel full.

One of the things I always look forward to during my free 30 Day PCOS Diet Challenge is hearing from women who can’t believe how satisfied they feel in between meals. Having nutritious and filling PCOS meals is a powerful technique to reduce the need for snacking and to keep sugar and carb cravings at bay.

What a Good PCOS Diet Plan Looks Like

While going low carb and low GI is a good place to start, I also recommend:

All of the ingredients used in this PCOS diet plan are nutrient dense whole foods that provide a range of important micronutrients. I have also balanced the mix of healthy fats, protein, and carbohydrates to achieve macronutrient ratios that work best with PCOS.

Go Low Carb and Low GI but NOT Ketogenic

This is a low GI, low carb meal plan, but it’s not a no-carb one. While carb-free ketogenic diets are both popular and well known for achieving short term results for women with PCOS, I shy away from recommending them because going carb-free can be a little risky from a health perspective if not adequately supervised.

I have also heard from hundreds of women who have found ketogenic diets far too restrictive and unsustainable over the long term. This isn’t that surprising when you consider our natural biological conditioning for carbs.

Our brains and body are wired to run on carbohydrates, and when you starve them of this basic energy source during a ketogenic diet, powerful cravings arise as a natural defense mechanism. The problem is that if you cave in to these cravings you essentially blow your chances of getting into a ketogenic state and you have to start the process over again.

By contrast, when we stick to a low carb diet like this meal plan does, the small amounts of healthy carbohydrates support the hard work you are doing by helping to keep the cravings at bay. We’re still at the low end of the spectrum so you get all the benefits of better blood glucose regulation leading to improved hormone balance and subsequent weight loss. You just don’t have to apply nearly as much self-control.

Ready to get started?

I know from personal experience that one of the biggest problems with using food as medicine is that cooking from scratch takes a fair bit of getting used to. But that’s just it, you do get used to it and it does get easier as you learn to find PCOS meals that work best for you.

Trust me, I was (and still am) a reluctant cook so I totally get people’s trepidation at resetting their dietary habits. But I am also thoroughly convinced of how transformative this experience can be which is why this blog exists in the first place!

PCOS Meal Plan Day 1

Breakfast: Breakfast Frittata

There really are few food combinations better suited to making your PCOS worse than a typical Western breakfast. As well as being packed full of pro-inflammatory foods like gluten, dairy and sugar, having a lot of readily digestible carbs in the morning also set’s you up perfectly for craving a sugary snack by mid-morning.

As a more PCOS friendly breakfast alternative, this hearty frittata is a much better option. The high protein and fat content ensures you get a slow and steady release of energy throughout the morning to comfortably get you through to lunch.

In the free pdf download of this PCOS meal plan, the breakfast frittata recipe includes a double serving size so you can have it for two days in a row. Doubling, or even tripling the batch size like this is a great way to give yourself a super quick and easy breakfast the next day.

Lunch: Curried Chicken Salad

This curried chicken salad is one of my personal favorites because it’s super convenient for work days or for taking on a picnic. Unlike your typical low-fat diet salads, this recipe is really filling thanks to the whole avocado and the generous serving of an avocado oil based mayonnaise.

Dinner: Zoodles with Quick Meat Sauce

I was originally introduced to this recipe by a busy mom who really knows how to cook. Zucchini noodles are the ultimate PCOS friendly alternative to pasta and have proven to be a real hit for women doing my full 10 Week Program.

Like most of my recipes, this one includes a healthy serving of meat which I consider almost essential for any balanced PCOS diet plan. Animal protein is the simplest and most reliable way to get adequate amounts of all nine essential amino acids in a bioavailable form. Whole food sources of meat also include many important micronutrients not readily available from vegetarian sources such as creatine, carnosine, and vitamins B12 and D.

PCOS Meal Plan Day 2

Breakfast: Breakfast Frittata

Since I know most people don’t have a lot of time for cooking in the morning, on Day 2 I want you to have the breakfast frittata again. This is why the recipe and shopping list included in the pdf download for this PCOS meal plan assumes you’ll cook a double serving on Day 1.

As a hangover from the 90’s many people have been incorrectly told that they shouldn’t have too many eggs because they’re bad for their cholesterol. The good news is that this myth is NOT supported by sound scientific research and there is little reason to believe that 2-3 eggs a day isn’t anything but good for you.

The truth is eggs contain a massive amount of healthy nutrients including the important brain nutrient choline and they actually improve your cholesterol profile. If you ask me, they’re simply a perfect daily breakfast food.

Lunch: Curried Chicken Salad

The same time saving approach applies for lunch on Day 2: Make enough curried chicken salad on Day 1, and you’ll have the perfect grab and go meal for Day 2.

Remember to include all of the vegetables listed in the ingredients, and add even more if you have some spare. Having big servings of non-starchy vegetables is absolutely essential to maintaining good gut health and is a key lever we can pull to help reduce inflammation.

Dinner: Garlic Ginger Chicken Wings with Broccoli and Quinoa

This next meal really ticks a lot of boxes when it comes to healthy ingredients. Garlic and ginger are both fantastic prebiotic foods while quinoa has to be my number one recommended carbohydrate food source.

From a practical perspective I love quinoa because it’s super versatile and keeps really well when stored in the fridge. I normally make a big batch at the start of the week, and add it to whatever meals I’m making.

When it comes to health, quinoa really is all it’s cracked up to be in terms of its amazing nutritional profile. As a gluten free carbohydrate with a low glycemic index, provided you stick to the portion sizes I include in the recipe, you can be sure to achieve steady blood glucose levels as you go about your evening.

PCOS Meal Plan Day 3

Breakfast: Flaxseed and Almond Meal Porridge

This meal is the perfect entry-level PCOS friendly substitute to sugary cereals and oatmeal. While in an ideal world we would all eat a breakfast even higher in protein and fat than this one, for those of us that live on earth and who just need something quick in the morning, this flaxseed and almond meal porridge makes a lot of sense.

The cinnamon used helps with blood sugar regulation (Allen et al. 20131), while both flaxseeds and almonds are known to lower testosterone levels in women with PCOS (Kalgaonkar2; Nowak et al. 20073). This is exactly what you need to reduce unwanted hair and skin issues, and to restore your ovulation.

Lunch: Garlic Ginger Chicken Wings with Broccoli and Quinoa

Making the most of your dinner cooking efforts on Day 2, I want you to enjoy this meal again for lunch the next day. Doubling the amount you make at dinner so you have enough the next day for a PCOS friendly lunch is a practical tip I encourage everyone get used to.

While I’m generally a big fan of eliminating sweet sauces from a PCOS diet, if you do need a little sweetness once in a while then rice malt syrup is the best way to do it. Also known as brown rice syrup, or just rice syrup, this sweet glucose goo is fructose free and is by far the lesser of two evils.

The same cannot be said of other “natural” sources of sugar like maple syrup, honey and agave nectar.

Dinner: Lettuce Wrap Burgers with Sweet Potato Curly Fries

This recipe is a creative PCOS friendly variant of your traditional burger with fries. I’ve included this one to show you that you can still have fun (and impress the family) while taking another positive step towards your health goals.

There’s two ingredients in this recipe that are particularly salient to women with PCOS: beef and coconut oil.

While also being one of the most heat resistant cooking oils for high temperature frying, coconut oil is awesome because it’s the number one source of another special family of fats. Known as medium chain triglycerides or MCT’s for short, these fats have been shown to reduce body fat, particularly from around the waist and hips (Mumme and Stonehouse 20158). Need I say more?

No more drugs, no more side effects, no more trips to see unhelpful doctors and no more wasting your life feeling sick all the time. While it seems almost too simple to be true, regularly eating in a way that is consistent with the example I have provided here really is a pathway to some of the greatest health you’ve ever known.

So give yourself a chance to let your true self shine.

Forming a healthy relationship with food and beating PCOS does take time so don’t put too much pressure on yourself – this is certainly a long term project. But taking action is key, so why not do something kind for yourself today and give this simple PCOS friendly diet plan stuff a try? Then make sure to let me know what you think.